


Vanished, and left but memories

by Koiios



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Romance, not quite canon compliant i suppose, this is very much a self-indulgent fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:40:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27759289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Koiios/pseuds/Koiios
Summary: Marian Hawke dares to hope that Fate, at last, might have favoured her.  She ought to know, by now, that hope is father only to disappointment.
Relationships: Female Hawke/Jean-Marc Stroud
Kudos: 2





	Vanished, and left but memories

**Author's Note:**

> There are criminally few fics for these two, so to everyone else in this rarepair hell, I salute you.

Hawke vomits the minute they’re out of the Fade. Some combination of the abrupt change in atmosphere, leftover adrenaline, and gut-clenching grief. _Stroud._ She’d never meant it to be this way; when she’d met him in Kirkwall and he’d told her – albeit with some regret – that he could lend her no assistance with the Qunari, she’d wanted to rip the moustache off his face and _scream_ at him. How dare he leave when people – _innocent people_ – were being slaughtered? Wasn’t it a Warden’s job to defend the innocent? To save lives? She was glad when he was out of her sight, running off to who-cares-where to do something other than help where he was needed.

But things changed after Kirkwall had exploded – quite literally – into chaos. It had felt wrong, cowardly, to flee when the people needed help to rebuild, and as she’d stolen away from the city she’d thought briefly of him: some vague memory had come to mind of watching him hurry off, glaring at the back of him as he shrunk from view. She was not acting so differently to him now. She’d wondered if he’d truly been justified in leaving, and if he hadn’t been, then could she consider her own untimely departure justified?

The question was a difficult one, though she had her reasons to disappear, and it did not leave her until she met him again. Complete chance, this time. Two deserters, who had happened to take refuge in the same dark corner. She sees him tucked in the shadows in some run-down tavern, and though he is without the distinctive uniform she recognises him immediately: moustaches like that are not a common sight, after all. She debates whether or not to go over to him as she inquires about the price of renting a room for the night, and then turns over the cost of the room and an ale to the innkeeper. By the time the drink is in her hand, she has decided that it can’t hurt to try. After all, she hasn’t spoken to anyone in weeks, now, and the lack of meaningful human interaction has begun to drive her slightly mad.

“Fancy meeting you here,” She says, once she reaches his small table, and he looks more than a little startled when he locks eyes with her. She hopes it is actually him – best to check: “Warden Stroud?”

The moment the word ‘Warden’ leaves her mouth he is rushing to hush her, rising slightly out of his chair in his alarm, “Keep your voice down!”

“Ah, sorry,” She mumbles, confused, “Should I leave you be? Am I intruding?”

He shakes his head, expression softening, and moves to pull another chair up to his table. It’s hardly big enough for two, and they’re a little cramped together, but it is strangely comforting to be huddled up like this, just out of reach of the lamplight.

“My apologies, I am a little on edge,” He explains as he sinks back into his seat, pinching the bridge of his nose, furrowing his brows.

“You and me both,” Hawke mutters, and huffs out a mirthless laugh.

“Yes, I heard about Kirkwall. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” Hawke asks, quirking a brow, and bringing her ale to her lips. It’s not the best she’s ever tasted – in fact its one of the worst, and she grimaces as she swallows her first sip. Stroud chuckles, a little.

“Pig swill, is it not?”

Hawke hums an affirmative, and then lets the silence sit, to indicate she is still waiting on an answer.

“I only mean that I am sorry for all you have suffered. It cannot be easy, to have so many looking to you for help, to be designated saviour when the nightmares come knocking,” He explains.

It is a curious way of putting it, and perhaps it is something of the Orlesian in him that makes him phrase it so. A small smile – perhaps a sardonic one – tugs at the corner of her mouth.

“I think you know something of that yourself, Ser,” She answers, softly, and he bows his head.

“I do.”

“And what brings you out here, to the arse-end of nowhere? Warden business?” She is careful to lower her voice to a whisper when she speaks of the Wardens this time, and he gives her a grateful smile for it.

“No,” He bites out, “I have left them.”

“Oh?” She is not entirely unfamiliar with renegade Wardens – an image of Anders jumps up behind her eyes – but she had not expected it from him. He had seemed oh-so-dutiful to the Wardens when last they met.

“I cannot say much, not here, but of late a madness spreads among the Warden ranks. Bad orders, straight from the top, blindly followed. The things they were doing…I could not be party to it. So I left.”

Hawke presses her lips into a tight line, takes another sip of her ale as she thinks what to say. No meaningful response springs to mind, so she settles on, “A lot of that going around. Madness, I mean.”

Stroud nods, and after a moment of introspective silence, speaks again, “Now you know why I’m here, what about you, Champion?”

Hawke wrinkles her nose at the title, but doesn’t comment on it, “I’ve an interest in red lyrium, of late,” she admits, “I thought whilst I was on the run from my responsibilities I might as well at least pretend to be useful, so I’m looking into it.”

“And how goes the investigation?”

“I know red lyrium is bad news, but so far, that’s about all I know,” She says, “Turns out, I’m not much of a scientist.”

Stroud laughs, at that, and she’s given the distinct impression that he hasn’t had cause to laugh in some time. It wasn’t especially funny, after all. But perhaps bad jokes are made hilarious by terrible situations. She smiles at him, gentle, and any animosity she might once have felt for the man melts away. They are in the same boat, now, she knows. Two drifters, trying to make sense of something, anything.

“We needn’t talk of bad things, though,” She says, after another moment of quiet has stretched between them, “Perhaps we’ve both had enough of the bad in the world. Want to pretend things are normal, just for the evening?”

He nods, slow and heavy, and she can see his smile in the crease of his eyes, even if his mouth is shrouded by moustache, “Yes, please.”

“Then tell me about yourself, Ser. I’m interested to know more of you.”

And he does tell her more about himself. He tells her of his childhood in Orlais, markedly different from her own upbringing (and significantly more luxurious, by the sounds). He tells her of his induction to the Chevaliers, of the knight he had hoped to become, and of the death of his parents at the hands of the Game. She can sympathise with that, knows the agony of orphanhood, and suddenly his unwillingness to involve himself in matters political takes on a different sheen. She feels a little guilty for ever being angry at him. Then he tells her of his conscription, Clarel’s intervention, to keep him from throwing his life away for the sake of revenge. She dares not ask if he would do things differently, had he the chance to go back, but the question sits in the back of her mind.

In return, she tells him of her own life, regales him first with tales of Carver and Bethany and her parents, then with tales of her friends in Kirkwall. Each story would have been told so much better by Varric, and she tells him as much, but he only smiles and shakes his head. She is a better storyteller than she thinks, he reassures, and he is glad to hear of happier times, no matter how poor the delivery is. He has a calm way about him, she thinks: he is smooth speech, slow movements, soft eyes. She likes it. It’s comforting.

They stay up talking later than they realise, and by the time they agree they ought to be sloping off to their rooms, the inn is almost emptied of patrons. She expects, as she stops at the door to her room, that once she steps inside she will not see him again. They will likely leave at different times come the morning, and head in different directions. As he stops at his own door, he turns abruptly to look at her.

“I would just like to say,” He begins, and his gaze is fixed pointedly on her, his eyes locked with hers, “that I am sorry I did not do more that day, in Kirkwall. Truly, it gladdens me to see you alive, and safe.”

“Safe is a generous way of putting it,” She quips, but there is no edge to her now, “But you needn’t be sorry. Thank you, for tonight.”

“And you. Sleep well.”

“Goodnight, Ser.” She wants to use his name, but she won’t risk it being heard by other ears. He smiles at her once more, the same crinkling of his eyes, and then – reluctantly, she thinks – pushes open the door to his room and retreats inside. She follows suit, and when she shuts her door behind her she is a mix of emotions, and questions, but chiefly she is sad to think that this one brief instance of companionship has come to an end. Once more, she is alone.

She cannot sleep. Some foolish, irrational part of her wants to get up, go and knock on his door, talk his ear off all night just for the sake of finally having someone to confide in, and she has to remind herself that she does not know him, not really, and it would be wildly inappropriate. Still she tosses, and turns, and it is all she can do to keep her eyes shut, in the hopes that perhaps lying in the dark with your eyes closed is just as good as actually sleeping. She knows it is not.

When she hears the first birdcall, sometime just before dawn, she admits defeat. She needs to be back on the road before daybreak, really, and lingering here won’t do her any good, but as she is gathering what few things she has a knock sounds at her door. Her staff is out of commission, bundled up, concealed – a little poorly, if she’s honest with herself – by blankets, which she strapped about it in the hopes of disguising it as some sort of bedroll, so she reaches for the small dagger tucked into the back of her belt. It will prove inadequate protection if there is more than one of them, but at the very least she means to give them a shock, something to think about.

But when she peers around the door it is no shadowed hunter waiting for her. It is Stroud, benign and unthreatening, and when he sees the dagger in her fist he raises his hands, palms open toward her, to indicate that he means no harm. She sighs, tucks the blade back into her belt, and rests her head against the doorframe.

“Sorry. Can’t be too careful, you know?” She says, and he nods in understanding.

“I know. I am glad to have caught you; I was a little concerned you might have left already. I have been thinking, about what you said of red lyrium.”

“And what thoughts have you had?” She queries, straightening up.

“If you needed help in your investigations…well, I do not know altogether too much of lyrium, but I may be of some use. And anyway, I think there is safety in numbers, is there not?”

It is probably foolish to take him along. The Wardens are one of the few groups entirely unconcerned with her whereabouts, and she does not need to have them tracking her, along with whoever else, but companionship on her travels is the thing she misses most dearly, and for once she thinks safety be damned. Anyway, he might have a point – he is considered one of the best swordsmen in the Wardens, after all, and against a group of assailants, be they Wardens or otherwise, two will fare better than one. The thought of having someone to guard her back grows more appealing the more she thinks of it. She nods.

“Very well. Are you ready to leave? I was just about to set out.” She says, and he nods, visibly relieved that she has agreed.

“Of course.”

They make a strange pair: he is austere and measured, wary and patient, and she is often sarcastic, often forgets to look before she leaps, and nowhere near as committed to doing things by the book. But they counterbalance each other in most respects – some of her recklessness is worn away by his caution, and he loses some of his hesitancy to her daring – and when they fight, any differences between them are forgotten, and they are like two parts of the same machine. There is no need for them to talk tactics, shout orders to each other. Each knows what the other needs and when it is needed: his shield is there to catch the arrows that fly at her, and when anything tries to flank him she is ready to cast up a barrier about him, and when her hands burn and she throws fire she does not have to worry about accidentally hitting him, because she knows how he moves, and he knows how she moves, and they work in tandem. It is exhilarating, and almost like dancing, and no matter how different each opponent is from the last they know the right steps.

There are times it comes too close for comfort, when two is too few against herded demons, and she sees him holding off three, or four, at once, and the effort of keeping up a barrier around him and herself, casting blazing spells, dragging up great walls of ice and fire all at once makes her head pound and her nose bleed, and at times the staff is too cumbersome, she is a fraction too slow in twirling it, its range of fire is too narrow, and she forgoes it all together and lets the energy pour from her fingertips, feels the magic crackle around her fists, feels the heat all around her as she splays her fingers and lets the flames pour outwards from them. She nearly hits him then; he has to jump back to keep from being singed, and she has no time to apologise, but she doesn’t need to. He adjusts, so that he is at her back, and whilst she cleaves the world before her with flame he guards her blindside.

He has to shout at her to break her from it, grasping at her arms, reassuring her that it is done, they are safe once more, and then the flame fizzles and dies and her arms fall to her sides and she would drop to her knees, if not for his strong arms catching her. He turns her, pulls her against him, and lets her sag against his chest, energy entirely spent. He says nothing, only holds her, and lowers them both to their knees, and once her head ceases its spinning she pulls back from him. His uniform is a little blackened on one sleeve – the stupid Grey Warden armour, she cannot fathom why he still wears it – and her face creases in concern when she sees it.

“I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”

He shakes his head, “No. Are you alright?” As he asks the question he lifts a gloved thumb to wipe the blood from her nose, and the action is so curiously intimate, even in it's innocence, that her breath comes a little short.

She nods, and he sighs out a relieved breath.

“Thank the Maker. Can you walk? We ought not to linger here.”

They walk for as long as Hawke can manage, and find some cave to settle in. It is damp and dingy, but so too is it sheltered, and as she leans against a rock and tries to keep her eyes open, he goes out for firewood. She thinks of him while he is gone, in a half-dreaming sort of way, and how scared she had been to see him so pressed upon by those things, how gently he had handled her even after she nearly incinerated him in her blind panic. Her affection for him is something that she had never expected, something she had never even wanted, and it concerns her, and yet she cannot leave it be. The rough edges of her, sharpened by Kirkwall, are softened by him, and she likes the person she is when she’s around him, and she likes that he lets her relinquish leadership, which had been such a burden to her in Kirkwall. For once she is permitted to be the follower, and if she does not want to make a hard decision he will make it for her, because he knows the burden of leadership and he will gladly lift that burden from her if she asks him to. For once she does not need to be the head of a family, the Champion of a city; with him, she can just be Hawke, just be Marian.

He returns with the wood, and sets about making a fire, and she watches him through heavy-lidded eyes. He hums idly as he works, some Orlesian song that she has heard him sing often enough to know the tune to, though the words are just sounds in her ears. He is no choir boy, but his voice is pleasant enough, and she is content to let her eyes slip shut and just listen to him, the warm hum, the shuffling of his feet on the stone. With her eyes shut like this, she can almost pretend she is somewhere comfortable, somewhere that feels like home. There is a subtle domesticity in moments like these that she thrives on.

He goes quiet a moment, and when she opens an eye to see what is wrong, he offers her a smile.

“If you would like to sleep, I can be quiet,” He offers, and she returns his smile with a languorous shake of her head.

“No, please don’t. I like to hear you sing.”

“Then I will continue, my Lady,” He replies, with a jovial half-bow in her direction, and she laughs at the mock-obeisance, and then falls quiet again to hear him start the tune back up. He has the logs set up in short order, and once he has stepped back from them she lets a flame flicker and grow in her palms, leans over the wood, and blows it softly across the neat pile. The fire crackles to life, growing slowly, and once she is content that she has fed it enough flame she leans back again.

“We are a good team, don’t you think?” She muses, as Stroud comes to sit beside her. He nods, and when she looks at him he is looking into the fire.

“We are. I had not expected it. Perhaps the Maker intended for us to meet.”

She cocks an eyebrow, surprised, “You think our meeting divinely sanctioned?”

Stroud shrugs, “I don’t know, really. But it is a strange coincidence, not only to have met but to fit one another so well. It is enough to make one wonder, at least.”

Hawke smirks at him, and now the quirked eyebrow is suggestive, not surprised, “You think we fit together well?”

Stroud shakes his head at the tease, though he is good-humoured enough, “Joke if you will, Hawke, you know what I mean. You have felt it too, surely?”

“I think I have,” Her voice is quiet, low and sincere, and she hopes he gets what she is hinting at, though her meaning differs from his. He breaks his gaze from the fire to look at her, and as the silence between them grows, and a quiet intensity blossoms, her resolve strains. She is about to look away, clear her throat and crack some joke to break the tension, when he leans toward her. She draws a quick breath in anticipation, and he hovers a moment – perilously close – hesitating, waiting to see if she flinches back from him. She does not. Instead she closes the distance, and her lips find his, soft and warm and wanting. The hair of his moustache tickles her face, but she finds she does not mind. This does not need to be perfect: this is two people set adrift in the world, clinging desperately to one another, and as it is, it is enough.

There is only a moment of gentility, of calm, measured softness, before urgency takes hold and Stroud is tangling his fingers in her hair, and she is crawling into his lap, hands on any part of him she can reach; face, arms (his arms, oh Maker – she can feel the hard muscle even through the padding of his uniform), chest. Somehow it is messier than when they fight, perhaps because they are both so desperate for this, but once they have fumbled their way out of their clothes, and she has climbed back into his lap, let him sink into her with a sigh, it is right, and again they are two halves of the same whole, and they move as one, breathing their pleasure into each others’ mouths. The urgency of their need will not let them draw this first coupling out, and so they venture to know each other a second time, and this time they take it slowly, and Hawke endeavours to commit to memory what he looks like, what he feels like, and as close as he gets he cannot get close enough. The stone is damp and uncomfortable beneath her back, and one of her shoulder blades jars against a jutting ledge of rock with each press of his hips into hers, but it matters none to her. All that matters is him, above her, and the way he looks at her, and the touch of his lips, and the soft words he speaks to her.

He is all that matters.

Which is why she cannot bear to leave him in the Fade. She begs him to let her stay instead, but he shakes his head, touches his forehead to hers, and tells her that he left her behind once, in Kirkwall, and he would not ever do it again. He tells her he is sorry, so sorry, to hurt her. He kisses her, soft and desperate and so like that first kiss, and when he lets her go she catches Varric’s expression out of the corner of her eye, and grief and guilt collide, and she cannot stand it. But Stroud is pushing her away, mind made up, and where she is reckless he is measured, so she knows this is no thoughtless action on his part. He is committed to dying for her – he has balanced his life against hers, and found hers the worthier.

Varric’s hand closes around hers, and the Inquisitor’s hand presses to the small of her back, and there is no time left. She watches him over her shoulder as he runs at the beast, a cry of “For the Wardens!” on his lips, keeps her eyes on him for as long as she can, and she is glad that she does not see him fall. Her last glimpse of him is of him on his feet, sword whistling through the air, proving himself worthy of being called the best swordsman of the Wardens.

She hits the ground in Adamant with a thud that rattles her bones, and then the bile is burning her nostrils, and she is heaving her insides onto the stone. She does not care how many are gathered there, how many have been watching for her return. She hears a Warden ask after Stroud, ask where he is, and she is glad that she is bent double, that they cannot see the tears that sting her eyes.

She keeps her composure long enough to report that she means to venture to Weisshaupt, tell them what has happened, but once she is away from the party, once she has a moment alone, she collapses. Varric comes after her, saying something about everyone being ready to leave, and what was she waiting for, but the moment she turns teary eyes on him he shuts his mouth. As talkative as Varric is, he knows when to be quiet, and she’s thankful for it. He only holds her and she weeps against him, and all she can think is that he does not feel the way Stroud did when he held her. Varric is shaped all wrong, too big and too small all at once, and when they hug they do not fit together right. She is grateful for the comfort and at the same time she hates it, because it is not like what she has lost, and it makes the loss all the sharper to know that there is nothing here that is like him.

When she gets back on the road, destination Weisshaupt, she is both glad for and rocked by her own loneliness. On the one hand she is afforded the privacy she needs to grieve, on the other she is reminded again of the space where Stroud should be. He should be ambling along beside her, telling her about his parents, or about the Wardens he served with, or listening to her go on about some ridiculous sex story of Isabela’s, or griping about Fenris’ unnatural luck at Wicked Grace, laughing at her bad jokes and her good ones. She finds she camps very little on this journey; more often than not she stops at taverns, hoping to see a familiar man tucked into a dark corner. He is never there, and she can never sleep.

There is much clamour around the idea of going physically into the Fade at Wiesshaupt. Many are eager to know what it was like, and she deflects most of their queries by telling them the honest truth – it was the worst thing she’s ever experienced. Still they talk to one another, and sometimes she listens. She catches wind of a few discussing how one might go about going into the Fade, if it was possible to do it again. They seem convinced that it is, because Corypheus managed it once, but they cannot figure out the magic necessary. Hawke is reminded of Anders, who, after meeting Corypheus, had also pondered over what it would take to walk into the Fade. She wonders if he ever found the answer – if any mage could, it would be him.

And then she knows where she is headed after Weisshaupt.

Anders is a master of running and hiding, and harder to find than she anticipates, but she knows him well enough that he cannot evade her for long. She finds him in the Anderfels, and he hugs her tightly when he sees her, tells her that he’s been in touch with Varric, that he knows what happened.

“Then maybe you can guess what I have come to you for,” She says, grimly. He releases her from his embrace.

He is frustratingly resistant, but when he finally catches onto the fact that she will not give up, not for anything, he relents, and tells her yes, he thinks he might once have figured out how to go about it. He digs out his notes on the matter, crumpled and full of scribblings and crossings-out, and sighs.

“It will take blood,” He tells her, and her stomach clenches. She had feared that would be the case. All her life she had been so against blood magic, so disgusted by it, and now here she was, toying with the idea of using it. She remembers Merrill, sweet and uncorrupted Merrill, who saw blood magic as just another magic, only as evil as the intent behind it. Perhaps…perhaps, if she is using it to save a life…

Save two lives, in fact, since hers means so little to her now, without him.

“Then I will bleed.” She says, resolutely. Anders has a dreadful look on his face, grim and solemn. “Please do not judge me, Anders. If you knew how I felt…I am trying to save him.”

“You know this may not even work,” He tells her, one last ditch effort to talk a friend out of what may be an awful mistake, “I cannot be sure I have the magic all worked out. And even if it did, there is no guarantee that he is even alive in there, or that you will find him, whether he is or not. And what if you got stuck there?”

“Then I get stuck.”

“Hawke…” He is fighting a losing battle, he knows it, and the pleading tone to his voice is only enough to make her resolution falter for a second, before she steels herself once more.

The ritual is an utterly miserable one. Anders is not powerful enough to pull it off by himself, and Hawke does not want to force him to draw his own blood, so she does the bulk of the work, letting him do only as much as his conscience will allow. All the while she tries to think of the Fade, of the exact place she left him, in case the physical Fade can be at all shaped by intent, as the dreaming Fade is. It takes some time before anything really begins to happen, but then it happens all at once, and before she knows it she is face down in the Fade.

She won’t rejoice yet. She has not succeeded yet. She does not know where she is, or where he is, nor which direction to head in. she holds her staff hard in her hand, white-knuckled, half-anticipating a demon horde to spring at her. But the Fade is markedly empty. There is very little here, save for a few floating objects. She tries to shut her eyes, clear her mind, and see if anything pulls at her, if there is any indication of which direction she should go. There isn’t, but a wind seems to blow from the back of her, the gentlest of breezes, pushing her forward. Forward it is.

She does not attract as much attention as she had expected to. What few demons there are she makes easy work of, but the bulk of the spirits she comes across are benign enough that they ignore her. She is not important enough, she supposes. The last time she had been here, she had been with the Inquisitor. She is not in such grand company this time.

She walks for what feels like days, and yet somehow she does not tire. Something in the atmosphere of the Fade buoys her, makes her indefatigable. Perhaps it is the magic, perhaps there is enough of it here to sustain a living being. She hopes so: it might well have sustained him. But still no sign. She is beginning to wonder when she ought to give up, or if perhaps she should venture to ask a spirit for help. She stops where she is, screws her eyes shut, and thinks very hard about him. Not about how she had seen him last, but about how she had seen him first. It is her clearest memory of him. She feels herself moving very quickly, though she is stood still, as though the ground she is stood on is shifting, and then –

Tucked into a dark corner. And she recognises him immediately. How could she not? Moustaches of that sort aren’t so common. Composure abandons her and before she can think she is running and screaming and she doesn’t care what attention she attracts, so long as she attracts his. He looks up, and he looks out of sorts, not quite himself, but still he gets to his feet and catches her when she throws herself at him.

“I don’t understand,” He says, “This must be some trick. You are not here.”

She is crying too hard to speak, at first, but then she manages to piece together a few words, “I am. I am here. I’ve come to get you.”

He pushes her back gently, to hold her at arms length, and she wipes furiously at her face, willing the tears to stop so they can talk properly. He does not believe her, she can see it in his face.

“This is a cruel game,” He says, and he looks utterly defeated, completely heartbroken, “To dress in borrowed clothes and taunt me like this, spirit.”

“No, no, it _is_ me, it’s Hawke. Your Hawke. Your Marian,” She insists, voice still a little wobbly.

She wants him to smile at her, to see his eyes crinkle, but he does not. He looks a shadow of what he had once been. He looks utterly ruined. He has not been here long, it has been a matter of weeks since she left him, and she’s sure time is different in the Fade, so maybe it did not feel so long to him. But he is changed. She supposes he had expected to die, and instead he had lived, and living had broken him as it had broken her.

She wonders, briefly, if she should not be more wary, if this is not the trick of some demon. But no spirit meaning to fool her would put him on only to make him look like this, no spirit would play him as defeated, as a shell of himself. That is not how she remembers him.

“What do you want?” He asks, warily, dropping his hands from her arms, flinching from her when she reaches for him. It _hurts,_ terribly, but she chides herself that she did not expect this.

“I want to take you out of here, I’ve come to save you.”

“And what will you ask of me in return? What false bargain do you tempt me with, creature?”

“Nothing. I want nothing. Only to see you safe, to see you happy. _Please,_ Stroud, Jean-Marc, _please._ Believe me. I am telling the truth.”

“You truly want nothing?” He asks, and there is a small waver in his voice.

“Truly.”

“If…if it is you, if you are here, how?” He is still on the side of disbelief, still nervous to touch her, but she jumps at the chance to explain.

“Anders has been studying how to get physically into the Fade, ever since we first met Corypheus,” She pauses a moment, and then, “You remember me telling you of Anders, don’t you? My friend.”

“Who blew up the Kirkwall Chantry, yes,” Stroud answers drily, but the memory seems to go some way to convince him.

“Well, that was not his finest moment. But he found a way, he figured it out, and I found him and…well, the ritual was a foul thing, and you will not be proud of what I have had to do to get here. But it worked, and I’m here. It’s me.”

“Blood magic, I assume,” He says, brow creasing.

“Regrettably. But only my own blood,” She thrusts an arm towards him, to show him the deep cut across her hand. Terribly deep – she had needed a lot of blood. She makes no mention of other cuts she had had to make, lacerations hidden by her sleeve. The hand is still weeping blood, though mostly it is drying up, old blood cracked and black around the edges of the cut. He takes her hand gingerly in his, looking at it, and his face crumples.

“You have wounded yourself badly. This will scar horribly, if it heals properly at all.”

“As long as you will not think me ugly for the sake of a scar, then I do not mind,” She says, simply, and he looks back to her face. He gets close to her then, feeling across her skin with his fingertips, inspecting each and every detail. Of course, it is all as he remembers it. Her skin has all the same blemishes, her armour has all the same scuffs. Her hair feels just as soft, and when he thumbs across her lower lip it is as it always was. He takes her into his arms, crushes his lips to hers, and she cannot tell if this is another test of her validity or confirmation that she has passed but it matters not. The kiss is desperate and messy and their teeth knock together and neither can decide where to put their hands, and it was just like it had been the first time. As close as they are, as intertwined, they cannot get close enough to satisfy themselves. It is some moments before they break from one another, breathless and flushed.

“It…it is you. It is actually you?” He sounds as though he still can’t quite believe it, but that is not important. He is convinced enough, she is sure, that he will follow.

She tangles her hand with his, still breathing hard, and looks him dead in the eye.

“I found you by thinking,” She tells him, “I thought very hard about you, and it brought me to you. Now we need to think very hard about getting back.”

“If we think of different things, will we not end up in different places?”

“I hope not. Don’t think of the Fade. Think of being out of it. Think of going back to that tavern, or that cave. Picture yourself walking out of here and into there, with me. I will do the same.”

Slowly he shuts his eyes, and she does the same, and as she thinks she squeezes his hand. The world rushes around her again, but she still has her grip on him, and when she opens her eyes she is back at that gaping rift that she had come in by.

“It really is you. You really did do it,” He believes her completely now, now that he can see how she got in.

“It is. And you can come with me, this time. Nobody has to be left behind.”

He smiles, then, broader and bigger than she’s ever seen him smile, and his eyes crinkle, and tear up, and together they step out, and into the world.


End file.
